I'm doing a final major project in graphic design. My project is a bid for skateboarding to be included in the olympics.

The International Skateboarding Federation have said its a question of when it will be involved with Olympics not if it'll be involved. They also said that if they don't bid for it then someone else will that doesn't understand the culture of skateboarding.

however i want to know what you think about skateboarding being introduced into the olympics?What do you think it'll bring to the skateboarding world, would it effect the culture?

The best part of the “culture” of skating is that if you try to call it a sport, 90% of its participants are going to tell you to go fuck yourself and deny that it’s a sport. This is pretty unique since most athletic endeavors are full of douche bags that lust over their little niche attaining “sport” status and the heavy commercial promoting and hero worship that comes with it.

Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of the younger crowd is obsessed with their skate “careers” and getting sponsored and shit but cry about corporations and money polluting the culture. It’s as hypocritical as some hippy preaching about veganism while he adjusts the collar on his leather jacket and stomps out the cherry of a Native American Spirit with his leather sandal. If you want to shake the money tree than you better be helping water it. We have already seen a few boom and bust cycles and it just got folded into the history of skating.

I am off to go put the final touches on my high performance technical wear moisture wicking skate skin suit in preparation for my Human Growth Hormone assisted training program.

I just now had to Google International Skateboarding Federation. (If you're too lazy, it's the parent company of all contests where the announcers sound like Macho Man Randy Savage.) Anyhow, yeah, super relevant with most skaters.

I guess it would be no different than the X-Games. You can hate on organized skateboard competitions all you want, but it truly has changed skateboarding. Some say it has made it worse, others would argue that it has actually made skateboarding better. Either way comps are here to stay and if the ISF wants to rep the bid to get skateboarding into the Olympics, fuck it. It's going to happen eventually, might as well be them....

Fact of the matter is, if you really love skateboarding chances are you will skate regardless of how popular it is. I remember getting made fun of for skateboarding in high school. I went back to visit some of my HS teachers and sho' 'nuff a lot of kids were wearing DC shoes and Zoo York shirts LOL...which was unheard of in my day.

I don't think skateboarding could get anymore kook'd out than it already is, but I've been wrong several times in my life. The important thing to remember about the "culture" of skateboarding is that it encompasses so many things...the skateboard culture itself is a smaller subculture within urban culture...its very hard to delineate what skateboard culture actually is. If you are going to say, "Well skateboard culture is the culture of skateboarders." That is pretty broad. Anyone who has been skating for at least a year knows there are skateboarders from many walks of life and I think that is the raddest part about skateboarding. Anyone can do it. There are no teams or rules. Best friendships I have were through skateboarding. We are very unique creatures. Creative yet strong. I def went on a tangent there, but you get the gist...

The International Skateboarding Federation have said its a question of when it will be involved with Olympics not if it'll be involved. They also said that if they don't bid for it then someone else will that doesn't understand the culture of skateboarding.however i want to know what you think about skateboarding being introduced into the olympics?What do you think it'll bring to the skateboarding world, would it effect the culture?

Sadly the Federation is probably right about it only being a matter of time, not that they are actually in touch with skateboarding 'culture,' whatever that is. Supposedly more kids skate in the US than play baseball now, so I doubt it can get too much more blown out. The thing I'd really like to see when this happens is the 'street' competition not be at some x-games type course they made for the Olympics, but separate events held for the ledge-dancers and hammer-heads at existing spots in whatever city. Where we need the most PR is out in the streets, and Olympic type exposure to real street skating would probably help open some minds and diffuse some of the kickout situations for the rest of us...